Happy Kings' Day

This fruity looking ring cake called 'roscon de reyes' is something that you'll see people consuming along with thick, rich Spanish hot chocolate at this time of year. Apparently it's a treat dating back to Roman times (though the recipe is different) when a bean was hidden inside the cake and the lucky person finding the bean was 'king for the day'. That's something else which has also changed. The prize inside the cake is now a plastic figurine and the unlucky person finding the prize has to pay for the roscon. If you can guess how much this particular roscon cost, you can pay for it. Deal?

Yesterday morning while I was thinking of having roscon, the doorbell rings and it's not the Avon lady but the President of the building informing me that part of the wall that belongs to the adjoining building had fallen during the night just as we had predicted it would. They had, under threat of a fine, supposedly repaired the wall in question. In reality, they had just slapped some cement on and painted over it. Anyway as I'm responsible for all documents past and present, I had to locate anything pretaining to the building next door because I had no idea what I might have to produce in a nanosecond. To make a long story short and with the President shouting at the person she's talking to at our local police station, she's told that she has to call the emergency number, which she does. They, in turn, send the fire brigade and they come barreling up the street, sirens going. About five or six firemen enter and one of them has a pick or an ax which they use to finish the job that the rain during the night and a botched job on the wall had done. So now we've got a mess on OUR patio, but the firemen arriving did get a rise out of the people next door. They, of course, thought it was a fire and two of them, who own an apartment in my building, came running over, one of them wearing a robe, but that's something normal here. After the report from the fire brigade they will have to repair that wall once and for all. What these people don't want to recognise is that the poor condition of their building is a danger for everyone, themselves included. On Wednesday some brick from a building in the centre of Madrid fell on a woman visiting from Valencia and killed her. The ironic thing about this particular incident is the building where the accident happened is owned by one of the big insurance companies here.

I'm going to take myself and my roscon over to Post Secret to see what's new. Hope everybody has a good safe week so it's so long for now.